Major players and influencers from the Canadian paintball community showed up to support the event as well, including Todd Ancich from Behind the Bunker podcast, Wolf Critchow, and NightmarePB.
“ I tried to focus on getting the legends of paintball involved,” Blue Commander Drew Schwandt said. And that was the central component of his command strategy. Seemingly, it worked.
When the commanders arrived at the field on Friday, they had some surprises waiting for them. The first curveball they were thrown for the weekend was the Commander’ s Game, a battle to determine the starting spawn points. It’ s far more exciting than a coin toss.
For this event, the producers laid out a single-hopper, best-of-three 3v3 matchup, and Schwandt knew he had chosen wisely in his recruiting. He called
upon Ryan Chandler of the Seadogs to back him up in the set, giving them a heavy advantage.
Blue took the first game without much friction. The second would come down to a one-on-one between Chandler and Keith Wilde of Covert Ops, giving the Blue team the win and choice of spawn point. And that was a glimpse of what was to come.
“ I’ ve tried to find words to describe the experience of commanding an event like this. It’ s not nerve wracking,” Schwandt said,“ but I definitely didn’ t know what I was in for.”
The next hurdle came with the magfed game. The Red team took that challenge by default, as Blue had only one magfed player, and that player was running a Planet Eclipse setup with a box loader, which was not allowed according to the rules of the game.
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